Baseball Ghosts, Crime-Stopping Statues, Monster Hamsters and More Mysterious News Briefly

Members of the Atlanta Braves baseball team staying at the 129-year-old Pfister Hotel in downtown Milwaukee swear its haunted reputation is true after they woke up to no power and no running water. If those are signs of ghosts, the entire state of Texas may be haunted.

Archaeologists studying calcite-alabaster vessels found in the Southern Levant (modern day Israel and Palestine) always assumed they were made with foreign alabaster, mainly from Egypt, but new research published in the journal Nature shows some calcite-alabaster objects, such as Herod the Great’s calcite-alabaster bathtubs in the palace of Herodium, were made locally. Does knowing that Herod supported locally owned businesses make anyone change their opinion of him?

Visits to the dentist for a root canal may get easier as researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have developed nano-sized robots manipulated with a magnetic field that can help kill bacteria deep inside dentinal tubules or canals inside a tooth’s root to prevent infections For those who miss the old days, maybe they can adjust the nanobots to make loud drilling sounds and constantly ask if you’re OK.

Those rocket launches and reentries that so many people mistake for UFOs may look cool, but researchers from the University of Nicosia in Cyprus found that the increase in commercial spaceflights and their rockets' propulsion emissions have created major heating and compositional changes high in the atmosphere that are having a significant cumulative effect on the Earth's climate. Elon Musk apparently missed the tweet they sent him.

Astronomers studying the Milky Way star HD 222925 found it contains 65 different identifiable elements, including gold, which puts it second only to our own Sun, which has 67 different elements, including about 2.5 trillion tons of gold. Does Alex Jones know about this?

Police in Uttar Pradesh, India, say a gang of thieves which stole 16 statues from a 300-year-old temple to Lord Balaji last week has returned them along with a confession letter which said they were returning the idols because they gave them scary dreams. Sounds like it’s time to start packaging steaks, expensive clothing, and other highly shoplifted items inside Hindu god statues.

A new study by researchers at the Inclusion Initiative at the London School of Economics and Political Science found that artificial intelligence is “equal to or better” than human recruiters at selecting high performing employees because humans are “plagued by cronyism and bias” when hiring people. “Cronyism and bias” – isn’t that why one attends an Ivy League school?

Researchers at Georgia State University admit that a recent CRISPR gene editing experiment with hamsters to suppress aggression and increase social bonding instead turned the little rodents into hyperaggressive monsters that were both more aggressive and more social. Sounds like our worst nightmare – hamster politicians.

Start-up Air Company has developed a technique to turn captured carbon dioxide (CO2) into ethanol which it then distills into Air Vodka – a pricey but trendy spirit which costs $65 for a 750 ml bottle – the company is also turning captured carbon dioxide into hand sanitizer and perfume. When mixed with tomato juice, it’s called a Bloody Airy.

In March 2022, marine archaeologist Mensun Bound discovered the wreck of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance, more than a century after it became trapped in ice and sank, and now he’s worried that ocean acidification and melting ice caused by global warming, combined with advanced underwater robotic devices attempting to loot it, exposing the Endurance to dangers unlike any it experienced for 100 years. Does anyone have a waterproof Hindu god statue? (See above.)